


a little journey to the unknown

by glorious_spoon



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, First Kiss, M/M, Spells & Enchantments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-09-27 15:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20410219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Alec has been coming out to the waterfall in the woods for as long as he can remember.





	1. took a little journey to the unknown

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [sh_ficletinstruments](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/sh_ficletinstruments) collection. 

> **Prompt: Underwater Meeting**
> 
> [Painting by Ian Rayer Smith.](https://www.creativeboom.com/uploads/articles/b6/b6abda6748a37ac823a45488099a91d3eac994d1_1100.jpg)
> 
> Title is from [Meet Me in the Woods](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5axbaGBVto) by Lord Huron.

The statue had been at the bottom of the waterfall for as long as Alec could remember. Centuries, probably. There were old ruins in these hills, crumbling watchtowers reaching for the sky, their stone faces softened with vines, divested of their martial purpose now that the demons had been bound away.

Legend said that the last king of Edom gave his own life to save his people, that his sacrifice knitted the earth back together and trapped the darkness beneath it.

Legend said that on the eve of a terrible battle the king walked through the forest weeping for the people he couldn't hope to save, and stopped at the brink of a great waterfall, closed his eyes and offered his body and his magic and his life, and the forest—

—answered.

*

Alec knew it was just a coincidence. His waterfall was no mighty torrent, just a narrow trickle winding down the rock face into a deep cool swimming hole. There was something magical about it all the same, though, something that kept him returning every summer as childhood slipped away and manhood fell upon him with all its complications. He’d sit on the rocks and listen to the birds, swim in the cool water and dive down to where the light was faded and green, where his statue lay with both hands lifted toward the surface as if in benediction. The face of the king had been carved by a gifted sculptor. Even now it looked nearly alive: sharply, startlingly lovely. The curve of cheekbones, the suggestion of eyelashes, the strong jaw. The lips that looked soft enough to kiss.

Alec was a broken fool, to find the image of a long-dead man more appealing than all the soft warm laughing girls in his village. Jace liked their charms well enough, but Alec—

He’d do his duty to his family. He’d find a proper bride this year at the autumn feast, and that was all.

It was too cold to swim the last day he came to the waterfall, but he stripped down to his smallclothes anyway, slid into the water and dove down to where the statue lay. With one hand he gripped the rock face to keep himself in place; with the other, he reached out to touch the carving. A bit of sentimentality, this private goodbye—to his childhood, to the possibility of magic—but there was no one here to mock him for it.

It was that thought, perhaps, that had him closing that last bit of distance to press his lips to the cool stone.

And something _changed._

His mouth stung like he’d bitten into lightning. Stone became yielding and soft. A warm hand cupped his cheek, a warm body slipped into his arms. Alec pulled back, stunned, and just barely stopped himself from breathing in water.

He looked into the face of a man who wore his statue’s face, who stared back at him with eyes that were shocked and golden and _alive._


	2. come back changed, i can feel it in my bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit of Magnus POV

In dreams, time passed differently. His lonely mind spoke only to itself, weaving fantasies out of the darkness. Bloody ones, mostly. Armies swam through his slumbering mind, fire and wings in the sky and the earth beneath was soaked with blood. The sudden weightlessness of his fall, the crackle of ice beneath like a thousand knives—

There had been very little of his life that had been spent in peace. But sometimes--sometimes he would dream of a world born anew, of peaceful towns and clear skies and fields grown high and green. Of watchtowers and weapons’ caches crumbling forgotten and unneeded.

Sometimes he dreamed of sunlight on the water, of warm hands. The sweet press of lips to his.

_A kiss to break the spell, my king_, but what tender suitor could find him here?

*

Magnus felt it not as a kiss, but as warmth, a sudden tingling in his limbs. He moved, cracking and strange, his body becoming lighter by the moment. Found skin beneath his palms, a broad body nearly bare against him. Flesh and warmth and _life._

He woke from his endless dreaming to find a pair of startled hazel eyes inches from his own, a handsome face painted in dreamlike hues by the water. For a single dazed moment they just stared at each other, and then he sucked in an instinctive breath, and felt stinging water rush into his mouth and nose. 

He tried to cough but couldn’t. There was nothing but water all around him, pressing in, heavy and cold.

_—the scorched forest and the burning sky and the crackle of ice breaking beneath him, that terrible final fall— _

Warm hands gripped his shoulders, hauling him close. A flailing moment later, his head broke the surface, the sunlit glare blinding. He gasped, coughed, spat water and tried to breathe. The air burned in his lungs, the world icy and distant, and then he was hauled up onto a sun-warm rock, his rescuer a moment behind him, spreading a heavy palm across his back to keep him steady.

It was some time later before he could breathe without coughing. The air seemed sharp and cold, unfamiliar. With a trembling hand, he reached to push his sodden hair out of his face, and looked up slowly into the face of the man who had pulled him from the waterfall.

He was young, and by the rough cut of his wet dark hair and his deep tan, he was no nobleman. His palm, still resting on Magnus’s bare shoulder, was heavily calloused. His hazel eyes held something soft and amazed. 

“Are you alright?” he said. 

Magnus almost laughed, which of course set off another coughing fit. The man thumped him on the back again, but it took him some time to get himself under control enough to speak, and when he did his voice was thin and rasping. “I am. Thank you.”

The man’s smile was sudden and startled and lovely. “You’re welcome.”

_A kiss to break the curse_, Magnus thought, half-delirious, and straightened. There were so many things he could ask. He’d slept beneath the water long past the span of mortal years, that much was clear from the land around him, so changed as to be nearly unrecognizable. The peaceful trickle of what had been a roaring waterfall, the tall trees just shading to autumn colors where before there had only been burnt stumps and bloodied corpses flocked with crows.

_How long have I been sleeping? What’s become of my army, my country, my people?_

Instead, it was a simpler question he found on his lips. “Who are you?”

“Alec,” the man said. His hand was still warm on Magnus’s back, his body sun-browned and unscarred by battle magic or weapons of war. Beneath the golden trees he looked like a vision of a world that Magnus had hardly dared to hope for. A world he never thought he’d live to see. “My name is Alec.”


End file.
